By James Eng, msnbc.com
In what both sides
described as a momentous ruling, a jury in Oakland, Calif., has found
that Jehovah’s Witnesses was partly responsible for the alleged sexual
abuse of a girl by one of its members and must pay her more than $20
million.
The Alameda County Superior Court jury on Thursday awarded $21
million in punitive damages to the plaintiff, who is now 26 years old.
That was on top of the $7 million in compensatory damages it awarded her
on Wednesday.
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, the Jehovah’s
Witnesses’ legal entity, is responsible for the entire punitive damages
amount and 40 percent of the compensatory damages, said Rick Simons,
attorney for the plaintiff. Sixty percent of the compensatory damages
was assessed against Jonathan Kendrick, the man accused of abusing her.
The woman sued Watchtower, the Fremont, Calif., congregation of
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Kendrick in 2011. She contended church elders
acting under the authority of Watchtower knew about the risk of child
sex abuse in their midst but kept it secret.
“I once wanted to be
the best Jehovah’s Witness I could be. Now I feel I’m doing more to help
other children in Jehovah’s Witnesses than I ever did walking door to
door to spread the ‘good news,’” the woman said in a news release issued
by Simons.
Jim McCabe, attorney for the Fremont congregation of
Jehovah’s Witnesses, said Thursday before the punitive damages were
announced that he was “stunned” by the verdict and would appeal.
“This
is the first case I know of where a church has been hit with liability
involving a rank-and-file member,” he told msnbc.com.
The jury
found that the elders who managed the Fremont congregation in the 1990s
and who were under the supervision of Watchtower knew that Kendrick, a
member and a congregation leader, had recently been convicted of the
sexual abuse of another child, but they kept his past record secret from
the congregation, said Simons.
Kendrick went on to molest the
plaintiff, who was a Jehovah's Witness member in Fremont, over a
two-year period beginning when she was 9 years old, the lawsuit
contended.
Kendrick was eventually convicted in 2004 of the sexual
abuse of another girl, and is now a registered sex offender in
California, Simons said. He has not been criminally charged with abusing
the plaintiff, but Simons said the case is under investigation by law
enforcement.
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Kendrick was not in court for the trial and msnbc.com could not immediately find a contact number for him.
The
California sex offender registry lists two convictions for him: lewd or
lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age and sexual battery
involving a restrained person.
The lawsuit alleged that Watchtower
had a policy that instructed elders in its Jehovah’s Witnesses
congregations to keep reports of child sex abusers within the religious
group secret to avoid lawsuits.
“The verdict is significant because the policy of hiding sex abusers within the congregation was out in this case,” Simons said.
He
also said the judgment was “one of the largest in the country for a
child sex abuse single victim in a religious institution molestation
case.”
Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination noted for
its nontraditional interpretation of the Bible. Members are best known
for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The
Watchtower and Awake! magazines.
The woman filed the lawsuit after
trying, without success, to get Jehovah’s Witnesses in Southern
California and in Fremont to change the secrecy policy, Simons said.
“There
was no settlement demand from her because she felt the only way to
expose this policy and make it change was to bring this case to trial
and make it public,” he said.
“The money is the only way left for
her to force Jehovah’s Witnesses to stop keep hiding known sex offenders
within their congregation.”
McCabe denied Jehovah’s Witnesses has a secrecy policy concerning child sex abuse. He called the verdict "unprecedented."
“We’re stunned by the verdict. We hate child abuse and everything to do with it.”
McCabe
said he was not aware of any other case in which a religious
organization has been found liable for wrongdoing by a member who was
not in an official position of responsibility.
“We’ve got a long ways to go yet before this one is resolved,” he said of the planned appeal.
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